Thursday, January 27, 2011

The stuff they say…

There's this...

BOEHNER: Well, they -- they've refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. Why? Because Americans have -- the country was built on an idea that ordinary people could decide what their government looked like and ordinary people could elect their own leaders.

And 235 years ago that was a pretty novel idea.

Other than the outright lie about the content of President Obama's speech, a lie ably debunked by Barbara Morrill over at Daily Kos, Boehner's grasp of American history seems pretty weak for a man holding the country's third highest Constitutional office.

Just to be clear, this country was, in its inception, built on the idea that ordinary white men of property could decide who would administrate the government decided upon by an elite committee of white men of property who were drawn from an elite assembly of white men of property who were selected to represent the interests of white men of property.

235 years ago, that wasn't a bad foundation to build on. One of the best parts was that building on it, improving it, making it more habitable for more folks, was a considered part of the design. As a result, our country is a better place than it was, and holds out a promise to become better yet. That's the core of American exceptionalism to me.

Then there's former half-term governor of a large but largely empty state, Sarah Palin, making Boehner sound like David McCullough...

GRETA: Governor, last night there was a lot of discussion about the Sputnik Moment the President wants us to have. Do you agree with him? Is this our moment?

PALIN: That was another one of those WTF moments, when he has so often repeated, the Sputnik Moment, that he would aspire Americans to celebrate, he needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory and that race to space, yeah, they won, but they also incured so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union so I listen to that Sputnik Moment talk over and over again and I think, no we don’t need one of those.

2 Comments:

I didn't like the Sputnik moment as much as you did (maybe a generational thing, maybe it was just me). But does Palin think that satellites haven't been worth it? That countries shouldn't invest in satellites? Because they'll go broke? Apparently being a single party dictatorship wasn't what brought them down, but that they invested in science?